10 July 2011

Project 365: Week Twenty-Eight

Guh. Still slightly recovering from the Alaska trip. Got back on a Wednesday and went to work immediately Thursday and Friday. Thursday I was part-time and Friday started my current sojourn as full-time, so yay for increased budgets :). I also managed to get my Combatives videos up and in one place here on Blogger. I'm still trying to put up my fight video but Blogger keeps conking out on me.

Plus, somewhere in there I applied and was accepted to Graduate School (what was I THINKING??). I start the MPA program in the Fall and I have been alternating between "this could be fun" to "AAAAAAH!" to "I am so not smart enough for this."

Ergo, in lieu of documenting-the-general-life-of-me pics, I'm posting a few more from Alaska (with a bonus cats picture at the end). One day we drive down towards Seward to check out the Alaskan Wildlife Conservation Center, or as my husband and I put it afterwards: The Alaskan Wildlife Conservation Center of the Damned.

I'd like to introduce you to our first occupant: the neurotically incontinent moose. Anytime anyone lifted a camera (or possibly thought about doing so), this guy would pee. Copiously. With abandon. I bet camels are jealous. He's probably still peeing.

Our next contestant is The Very Challenged Porcupine. As you can see, he's currently sitting near the corner of the fenced-in area. Just off to the left is a wiiiiiiide-open space for him to frolic in (if a porcupine frolics). Does he go there? No, he would waddle the three or four steps into one corner, bash his head, and then turn around and do the exact same thing on the other side. I must have watched him do that for a good five minutes.

I wanted to make him a little helmet but we had to move on...

Make sure you get my best side!

Next we have the clinically depressed bear (slightly blurred out to protect his anonymity :P). He wandered out of his pseudo-log cabin and just flopped over on the porch before heaving a huge sigh and looking over at the people on the other side of the fence. All he needed was some skinny jeans, a floppy haircut and a little emo music in the background :).

Now we come to the anti-social Musk Ox. Whaddaya mean you can't see them? They must have paid the caribou to sit in their place. Here is what an actual musk ox looks like:

What I really love is the fact that their hair/horns looks exactly like the girl from the old Wendy's ads :). All he needs is some bows (see below):

Finally, we arrived at the last resident of the Conservation Center: Adonis, the one-winged bald eagle.

We certainly applaud the work the AWCC does and didn't mind paying our donation to go drive around and check out some animals we might never see otherwise, but it was just one of those moments that kept getting more and more bizarre the longer we were there.

I just went and looked back at all your Alaska pictures. so pretty!! my husband took the youth on a mission trip to Alaska last summer. I think he had ulterior motives.......loved the animal commentary. I have no words. just giggles.

hahaha I loved your commentary of the visit to the Conservation Center -- so much so that I had to read them out loud to my husband, who also got a kick out of them :)

You'll do great in grad school. What I learned as a non-traditional student is that I appreciated the education to a greater degree and was much more focused (compared to those years fresh out of high school). I made MUCH better grades as a more "mature" student :) Just think of all those years of experience you now bring to the table. You go girl!